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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28070547">Archival Footage</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerberuss/pseuds/Cerberuss'>Cerberuss</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, F/M, Female Sam Winchester, First Time, Missing Scene, Season/Series 01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 17:28:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,879</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28070547</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerberuss/pseuds/Cerberuss</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She was never a delicate thing.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>72</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Archival Footage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I started this way back in February, and if I was privy to a certain piece of finale knowledge then I probably would have written this differently. I desperately needed to get this out of my drafts though, it was backing up the pipes.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Dean came to collect his sister from Palo Alto, their time separated had caused him to forget the most fundamental things. </p><p>Her hair was wild from sleep, tousled around her head as Dean pinned his hand to her throat, and he’d misremembered the precise colour of that brown, and how his name sounded in her voice as she gasped it in surprise, recognising who had her caught against the floor, her body going lax with relief for a split second. </p><p>Arguably the most important point he’d forgotten was how easily she could flip fights, and it wasn’t until she had tossed him onto his back, her hair waterfalling around her face - longer than it had ever been on the road - that he remembered she was never a delicate thing. She smiled down at him, that big all-teeth, deep-set dimple one that Dean hadn’t seen in three years and there was a different kind of pressure against his chest. </p><p>She hauled him to stand easily in the midnight blue light and he bounced up on the balls of his feet, full of adrenaline and something else that made his hands shake. Sam was dressed down in pajama shorts that hid none of the legs she had kept on growing. The shirt she wore was one of his, stolen an age ago, when it still hung shapelessly over her shoulders, curled and tattered at her neck.</p><p>She had slid into the Impala, right back into the passenger side where she belonged and Dean could see her holding her breath, like it was too much too fast and the three years she’d put between college and this old life would come crumbling down as soon as she smelled the leather of the upholstery. Like how kids held their breath driving past cemeteries because someone once told them that's how you got possessed. </p><p>Sam would breathe in the Impala’s interior and she’d remember what it was about them that made her leave in the first place. Ghosts of the past grabbing her from behind the ribs, shaking her to her senses. She’d realise that letting her brother come collect her half asleep from this picket-fence direction of a life to go on a hunt for her estranged father was a bad idea.</p><p>Dean let the keys dig into the soft part of his palms as she wound down her window, tied up her hair into a loose ponytail, long strands messy at her neck; watched her kick her feet up onto the dash. </p><p>She breathed in. Flashed him a grin with her head tipped back against the bench seat.</p><p>“Remind me how fast this thing can go?”</p><p>---</p><p>It was short lived because days later, Dean pulled Sam from another burning building as she watched someone else she loved crisp up on the ceiling. </p><p>And Sam sat quiet in the car for hours at a time, swapping between pretending to sleep balled up against the door and keeping her gaze trained out the window. She wasn’t looking his direction, kept her head down, fringe long, in her eyes. </p><p>He’d turned on the radio on their way to some nowhere town where people were seeing figures in the corn fields and the speakers blasted something Dean didn’t know. Some alternative drawl that made Sam squeak and shoot up in her seat. She had reached forward and slapped at the off button quick-smart, turned her body away from him, pressed so firmly into her side of the car she might as well have been part of the door. </p><p>“She shared your birthday,” Sam had said after a prolonged silence of Dean not pushing. Sam’s recovery was something so wildly out of Dean’s control, he couldn’t begin to grasp it between fingers, wouldn’t even know where to start. </p><p>They’d lost their mother, but neither of them were really old enough for the ache to settle into anything more than that. Dean wasn’t about to try to understand what Sam was going through because he’d never loved a person with the same fortitude as she had. All he had to compare it with was the concept of losing his sister and that was something he couldn’t even begin to fathom without also feeling like he was going to violently empty his guts on the side of the highway. </p><p>Jess had the same birthday as him and nothing about that should have made jealousy burn as thickly through him as it did. It shouldn’t be about him, not even in the slightest. Yet every twenty-fourth day of January for the inevitable future, Sam would be thinking about the girl she had loved and lost, instead of her brother who was alive and at her side. </p><p>He wanted to tell her to shut up, but it wasn’t about him. He wasn’t the one going through the five stages of grief in the passenger seat. </p><p>---</p><p>They worked, business as usual for Dean except there was someone beside him to fill the silences again now, and he’d start sometimes, when Sam would correct his Latin or hum along to the tape. Flinch, just a little. Like this Sam was still the Sam from Dean’s first few months alone, the one that sat just out the corner of his eyes when he’d been staring at the road too long. Sam’s spirit, tethered to the car, or something like that. </p><p>But this Sam was physical in the way the car rocked her body, in the sting at the back of his hand when she slapped it away from the heat dial. In the way she used her fingers to comb the knots out of her hair. Imaginary Sam from the corner of Dean’s eye was too put together. Off, just slightly with perfect hair and clothes three years out of style. The same ones she wore in the middle of the road on the night she left. The pull in the fabric of her shirt where Dean had twisted his fist had been smoothed, like it had never been there at all. </p><p>Figmented, Mr. Potato-Head slices of his sister. Build your own backroad company. </p><p>The flesh and blood Sam, who had her legs crossed under her also had dried mud scratched up her neck, a cut low on her collar and called him a bitch when he snatched the Reese’s from the plastic bag in her lap. He let the peanut butter stick to the roof of his mouth, stuck his tongue up there too because the solid press of Sam’s knee against his hip rocked him with the roll of the car, and the reminder that she was back with him hit very hard. He was afraid he might admit to something if he were to open his mouth.</p><p>She got better each truck-stop. Not that it was at all a linear healing process. There were set-backs. Bloody Mary in the mirror and Sam’s sacrifice. She had flipped the sunvisor down and used her sleeve to wipe the blood from the corners of her eyes under the sporadic orange streetlights, said nothing else because despite it all, Dean knew she still blamed herself for Jess’s death, and seeing the woman in the mirror only solidified the guilt. Judge, jury and executioner, and the red came off her face easily because they were being diluted down by tears less bloody.</p><p>He’d thought the change might be dramatic after they saw their mother again, while Sam had her back pinned to the wall, invisible poltergeist strength, and then was just pinned from shock when their mother saved her. Sam had never seen Mary, too young to remember anything but the blurred features in the sun bleached polaroids of Dad’s journal. </p><p>Days later, when they were sitting eating burritos against the car, Sam perched on the hood, feet propped up against the grill, Dean next to her, on a lean, picking paper from his tongue when he’d accidentally taken too big of a bite.</p><p>“How much of her do you remember?” Sam had asked him, crushing her rubbish into a ball. </p><p>“Who?” </p><p>“Mom.”</p><p>“Some.” </p><p>Sam was quiet for a little, running the foil ball back and forth between her palms. Dean finished his and Sam offered out her hand to take his rubbish, sliding off the hood. </p><p>“I can’t remember what her voice sounds like anymore,” she said, dropping the rubbish in the trash can by the side of the road. She looked out to the left, over the highway grass. The breeze whipped her hair up around her collar.  “It’s been less than six months and I can’t remember something so crucial.” </p><p>“Jess?”</p><p>She looked at him a beat. Obviously. When was it ever not about Jess. Dean understood, because there was a time he couldn’t remember the colour of his sister’s hair. Brown or blonde, the Sam from the corner of his eye would fluctuate between the two. But Sam was alive and Jess was dead and there would be no way of reminding oneself of how someone was, how they held themselves and the cadence of their laugh once they were gone completely.</p><p>“What happens when there’s nothing left of her? Once I forget completely? What then?”</p><p>Dean has never been well equipped to deal with questions like those, even though he’d always been the one to answer to his sister’s inquisitiveness. <em> What happens when we die? Are ghosts real? What would we do if Dad never came back?  </em></p><p>“I don’t know, dude. Maybe that’s just part of life, letting yourself forget. Maybe it becomes easier that way.” Perhaps he was talking from experience because if he had remembered Sam in full colour the entire time she was away he would have gone some type of insane. </p><p>Sam hunched up her shoulders, looked at him like she had expected an easy fix. Like Dean had the answer to morality and meaning behind unjust death, of grief and loss. He wished he did, so then maybe Sam would stop hurting so much. </p><p>“If Mom could come back -” She trailed off.</p><p>“No, Sam.” Dean stopped that train of thought before it could manifest any further. “I don’t know why Mom was still attached to the house. But Jess -” Dean swallowed. “Jess burnt up, there was nothing left for her in that apartment. Let the dead lay, Sam, you know this.” </p><p>“Would it kill you to show even a sliver of compassion?” Sam said and Dean was taken aback, not expecting a fight.</p><p>“What do you think I’ve been doing for the last six months, Sam?” He spread his arms out, open,<em> c’mon hit me where it counts</em>. “I’ve been patient. I haven’t pushed. I could have. Do you know how fucking draining it is sharing a space with someone that mopes twenty-four hours a day?”</p><p>Sam’s eyes were dark, angry. Her fringe in her face and she looked at him like she couldn’t believe what was coming out of Dean’s mouth. He remembered the stack of acceptance papers on the kitchen table and thought Sam had always been a little selfish. </p><p>“You’re the one that dragged me back into this. I don’t have to be here.”</p><p>“Yes you fucking do. Where else do you have to go? There’s nothing left for you in California anymore.” </p><p>Sam took in a short disbelieving breath and Dean felt guilt bite at him immediately. </p><p>“You just don’t want to be alone again,” Sam said, lowly, looking at him with malice behind her eyes. “You can’t stand it, can you? Now that Dad’s missing.”</p><p>“I was fine without you,” Dean lied and hoped it came across that way. </p><p>Sam didn’t say anything and Dean knew that she was thinking about the midnight phone calls he made from street-corner phone boxes with graffitied windows and piss-sticky floors. There weren’t many; three, tops, and Sam had answered every one. He’d been drunk, from very brown liquor and the deep pulling pain in his stomach from missing his sister. From seeing her in his peripherals, in the booth opposite him, at the bar, ordering them another round or three. From where she should have been. </p><p>Dean called her and she’d answer with that sleep thick voice, his name and that was all Dean really needed. They’d talk until Dean ran out of quarters, or until Sam couldn’t fight sleep anymore and then not again for another year or so. He didn’t know if it made him better or worse. </p><p>---</p><p>In Rockfield, Illinois, Sam stood over him in the asylum and aimed his own gun between her brother’s eyes. Dean didn’t recognise her, the violence she reserved for monsters, for the yellow-eyed demon, directed square at him, and he thought that if his sister hated him so much maybe he was better off dead anyway. What kind of brother was he if he had caused it all to crescendo to this? </p><p>They’d been in too close company for too long, going stir-crazy behind the wheel, this version of Sam who Dean didn’t know as well as he used to. The Sam that was used to the California sun and a normal kind of freedom. Freedom that had nothing to do with wide open roads but a house with someone in it to come home to. Four solid walls and no wheels. His sister couldn’t heal like this, in the confines of the car with no space to breathe, and Dean pushed too hard. She snapped. Dean knew it wasn’t only Dr Ellicot’s influence, that much hatred had to come from somewhere. </p><p>Sam pulled the trigger and the empty click bounced off the walls, Dean felt something crucial inside him tear apart with the sound. He had looked at Sam who had looked at him, confused, before the realisation of what she’d done hit her. Dean knocked her out and she fell to the grimy floor so ungracefully it made him sick to see. </p><p>The bruise that he gave her spread full flourished, blue and purple mottled around her left eye. Dean struggled to look at her for weeks, even once it had faded.</p><p>---</p><p>Sam changed after Dean almost died in the basement puddle. Like she had been shocked out of it the same way Dean had. Current ran through them both, put her heart back in the right place while it displaced his.</p><p>She had sat on the floor of the motel shower before La Grange put a hand to Dean’s head and channelled God. Things got worse before they got better, as it always went. </p><p>It was late, Dean had woken up from the pain in his chest, pinching behind his ribs as he breathed; it was only a matter of time, less now that he wasn’t hooked up to whatever they had stuck deep in the crook of his elbow. </p><p>He found her tucked up against the tiles, after there was no response from knocking - battering. She was still in her clothes, t-shirt and jeans sticking to her skin and Dean stopped in the doorway long enough for Sam to lift her head from where it had been resting on her arms, looked at him like he was the last person she had expected to see. Like he was the strange one for being awake at three in the morning, not Sam who was the one wrapped in a fetal position, taking a shower in her favourite outfit. </p><p>Dean crouched at the open door of the shower. Breathed through the pull in his chest at the movement, hand on the glass for support, tried not to let the pain show on his face because it would only make her worse. </p><p>“Sam?”</p><p>She looked up at Dean, her hair soaked down her sides, darker with the water, almost black. Her skin was pale from the cold and Dean had no idea how long she had been under the spray for her lips to turn that particular shade of blue. It wasn’t hard to tell she had been crying, her eyes red rimmed, tears chased away by the water and maybe that was why she had climbed in there in the first place. It didn’t count as crying if there were no tears to wipe away. </p><p>She had lifted her hand and for a second Dean thought she was going to reach for him, but she pulled it back, hid her face between her knees again. So he climbed in beside her, sat back against the wall so his side was pressed up against hers, felt her cold against his skin, left goosebumps up his arms. Sam made a choked sound, surprised, and Dean stretched up above them to turn the water back to hot, felt it soak through his clothes, saturated and matching his sister’s. </p><p>Sam leant her body into his, knees still hiked up and Dean took her weight; it was part of his job.</p><p>“I can’t, Dean,” Sam said, her voice rough, wobbly. “First Jess, and now you? How do I - how am I supposed to live through that?” </p><p>“Hey - Sam.” Dean grabbed her hand, detached it from where it was clawing at her leg. Held it in his own, tight enough to centre her back to him, here.  “Sammy - it’ll be okay. You’re alright.” </p><p>He wanted to laugh at that, <em> it’ll be okay, it’ll be okay</em>. In any other situation he’d have followed it up with, <em> we’ll figure something out</em>. But there was nothing funny about the metaphorical knives in his chest and this grief of his sister’s wasn’t going to disappear with Dean’s magical reassurance and a pat to the back. </p><p>One thing he was certain of was, that whilst he would not be okay, Sam would be, eventually. However long it took. Dean had seen it. Seen how easily she had assimilated into her new life at college without them. His sister was bull-headed and stubborn to a fault. She had Winchester blood and if their father had shown them anything it was that Winchesters were resilient. </p><p>“Remember when you were like, fifteen,” Dean started, not really knowing where he was going, but her breathing quietened with the sound of his voice and he wasn’t about to stop. “You got home from school with a huge clump of gum that some bitch had stuck in your hair, you remember that?” </p><p>“Amanda Tyler,” she confirmed under her breath. Leave it to Sam to remember details like that. </p><p>“Amanda fucking Tyler.” Dean shook his head, rubbed his thumb over where Sam’s hand was relaxing in his own. “Your hair was so long at the time and Dad... Dad had been begging you to cut it for months.” </p><p>Sam smiled, a little. It was like clockwork, every time Sam’s hair grew longer than shoulder length their dad would be on her back about it. Said it left her too vulnerable, too easy to get a hold on, to be hoisted around and Sam always sneered back something along the lines of, <em> guess I better not let ‘em get too close then</em>, and Dean was always a little terrified of her ferocity when she applied it right.</p><p>“It was like this then too,” Dean continued. “You made me pick it all out in the shower because you refused to put your head in the sink.”</p><p>“The sink was <em> brown</em>, Dean.” </p><p>He scoffed, <em> sure</em>. They’d stood under the faucet in pajamas, Sam facing the wall with Dean behind her, picking the tack out bit by bit. </p><p>“But I did a good job right? Didn’t have to cut any of it.”</p><p>“I think you pulled enough from my scalp to do the same amount of damage,” Sam laughed, the sound echoing around the tiles. “You probably didn’t deserve the split lip from when I kicked your knees out afterwards though.” </p><p>Dean remembers he did, because he had called her princess as a joke and she hadn’t taken it as one. </p><p>She used her free hand to rub under her nose, sniffled. Dean didn’t really think he had been much help, but if there was anything he was good at it was distractions and ignoring the larger issues at hand. </p><p>“You’re fucking stupid, you know that?” Sam said.</p><p>“I think you might have mentioned it in passing once or twice.” </p><p>“Not gonna let you die,” Sam said, squeezing his hand deathly tight. That same burning ferocity she was so good at harnessing, applied to the cause. “So you can continue being fucking stupid. Makes me look smarter, y’know? I need the confidence boost.” </p><p>Dean elbowed her in the ribs so she went tipping sideways, grinning. He pulled her back to him by her hand and they sat against each other under the water until reality didn’t seem quite so damning. </p><p>---</p><p>It came back to him in the weeks following. The months he watched Sam rotting beside him made him cherish the times his sister was genuinely happy, small snapshots of smiles and easy bickering. She healed in fragments, and snippets stretched out longer until she was the one kicking at his feet at dawn, <em> rise and shine, bitch, here's your coffee, yeah it’s black, no, no one thinks your cooler for taking it that way but I’m sure they assume your dick is huge, that's why you drink it, right?  </em></p><p>Somewhere through the year he’d forgotten that his love for his sister ran bone-deep. Her years at Stanford diluted it in him, while she wasn’t there with him, and then when she was, that new Sammy with permanent dark circles and the inability to take a joke. It wasn’t the one he had remembered, close to, but off-kilter, just a little. </p><p>She started to laugh more, snort at his stupid jokes from her side of the car like she couldn’t help herself. Being beside her slowly slid into something that came easily to him again. He could do this, he was good at this. The car felt lighter, the roads straight, the speed limit an additional ten miles an hour. </p><p>Sam had never been prude, never thought twice about stripping out of her dirty clothes in front of him on the way to the bathroom, slept in her underwear because pants twisted up around her waist through the night and Dean could understand that. </p><p>Growing up in close proximity to men meant that the usual bashfulness Dean had seen in girls her age never showed in Sam. There wasn’t room for it in their line of work, regardless. If Sam had been too shy to strip out of her shirt, she’d have much more gnarly scars, patching herself up in the bathroom instead of letting her brother take a look. Dean was grateful for it, however he still busied himself elsewhere when she changed. That was a problem of his own. </p><p>She was zipping herself into a dress, arms bent behind her back pulling at the fabric. Black and modest and one Dean had seen her in once a week since they were back on the road again. She wore it with stockings to wakes and police stations, blazer pulled over the top. She wore it without stockings to dates, apparently. </p><p>Sam asked Dean to do her up. Couldn’t quite reach that tough spot in the middle of her back, despite her monkey-limbs. Dean zipped her in so she could just be zipped out of it again by someone with daintier hands and softer features; Sam had always been more partial to women. He thought about snapping the zip clean off under guise of overuse, so no one would be able to get their hands on her because she was his <em> sister.</em> </p><p>Dean watched her, leant forward to get closer to the mirror, pushing earrings through the holes in her ears that had been empty since California. </p><p>They had been living somewhere east, where all the girls wore push-up bras and rolled their skirts over three times. Sam was sixteen and Dean had caught her with a safety pin from the first aid kit, trying to push it through her earlobe, one hand steadying the school-issue eraser behind as she bled down her neck. </p><p>He’d snatched her hands away immediately because <em> little sister </em> and <em> blood </em> were two words that should never reside that close together. </p><p>“Jesus, Dean. I’m fine.” She tore her hands away from his. Pushed him out of her space. </p><p>“I can take you to a shop if you’re adamant on putting holes in yourself.”</p><p>“Yeah? With what money?” Sam had said, and repositioned herself so she was leaning into the mirror, lining up the pin to try again. </p><p>Dean grabbed her wrist. “At least let me help, so you don’t come out of this looking like swisse cheese.” </p><p>Sam had looked at him, calculating his sincerity. Dean looked back because this was the sixteenth year of him giving his sister whatever she wanted and she ought to know that he had never been good at remaining nonchalant when it came down to her wellbeing. </p><p>Dean gestured for her to sit on the bench, stood between her knees, tilted her bleeding ear towards the overhead light. </p><p>“Since when are you interested in this kind of stuff anyway?” Dean asked, heating up the pin with his lighter, placing the eraser back behind her ear. She took it from him and held it in place. </p><p>“All the girls have their ears pierced.”</p><p>Dean frowned. He knew they didn’t fit in here - didn’t fit in anywhere - but Sam’s obstinacy to become one with the mob never made sense to him. “You don’t have to be like them.” </p><p>Sam was quiet as Dean lined up the pin, told her to take a breath in, and then to breathe out as he pushed the pin through in one quick motion. Her legs tightened around his hips as he pulled it back out and replaced it with the small, thin silver ring that she had picked out for herself. </p><p>“I think they look pretty,” Sam said, quietly, self-consciously, turning to look at herself in the mirror, her body contorted on the bench. Dean wanted to tell her she didn’t need anything extra to manage that, but that was not the kind of relationship they had; or should have. </p><p>“Just don’t bitch about them hurting,” Dean said instead, “You want the other one done too, or you going for the high-seas look?” </p><p>Sam turned back around, looked at him, excited by what she had seen in the mirror. Dean was hyper aware of her knees at his waist. Positioned too close for general conversation, she was warm on either side of him. Sam smiled at Dean, alive after the rush of pain, a little taller with the bench boost and Dean had thought about sliding his hands up the outside of her thighs, grabbing her until they were pressed together where it counted. </p><p>A recurring thought, ever since she had started throwing in her bras into his laundry loads.</p><p>“Do the other one too,” Sam said, putting the eraser back up in preparation. </p><p>Dean swallowed and did as he was told, leaning in as she turned her head. </p><p>“Breathe in,” he said. Sam did, closing her eyes and inhaling through her nose, she slid her arm around his neck in the same movement. “And out.” He pushed the pin through.</p><p>Sam’s thighs squeezed him again, and he was no more ready for it the second time. Her hand moved on his neck as he fiddled with the tiny latch to replace the pin with the sleeper, running her fingers through the hair at the base of his neck. </p><p>“Hurt?” </p><p>“Stings.” </p><p>“Suck it up,” he said in a whisper, letting his hands fall from beside her head to lay flat on the cold bench because there was nowhere else appropriate. Sam hadn’t let go of him. </p><p>It was a moment lost. A time between minutes. A state of limbo where Dean had looked at her and Sam had looked back with her fingers warm and defiant at the top notch of his spine. She had leaned in and Dean had not stopped it from happening. </p><p>She’d kissed him confident, like she was assured there would be no repercussions. His doggedly determined sister took what she wanted from him. He was powerless, the one soft, squishy part of him tenderised and ready for Sam to slide her knife into. Sam knew it. Sam knew Dean would give her everything. </p><p>It was a small dangerous thing. She smelled like rose deodorant and tasted like the corner-store candy she’d dissolved on her tongue on the walk home from school. Dean would never forget it, cursed to be destroyed with the reminder at the most inopportune times.</p><p>It had never happened again, and it seemed like it hadn’t changed her like it changed him. She’d pushed at the very borders of their relationship just to see how steep the drop was on the other side; took him for a test-drive, just to see if she could. Dean had spun out smoking and Sam got out from behind the wheel to walk away with her back against the imminent fire. </p><p>She left him in the hot summer, two years later. Looked at him distressed in front of the Greyhound, her hands shaking around the strap of her bag. Waiting for him to say some magic words that would stop her from going. She had curled a fist in the hem of his shirt and pleaded silently, as though she hadn’t been the one that kissed him, as though this was his fault, as though in actuality, she had been waiting this whole time for Dean to instigate more. </p><p>And Dean hadn’t, so Sam had gone west and left him in the wake of misunderstanding. </p><p>---</p><p>Sam got dragged under the pews in a Mississippi cathedral. Pulled to communion by her ankles, nails scraping on the concrete floor while Dean fumbled with the matches. </p><p>Dean had shouted her name and heard it echo around the vaulted roof. The spirit tossed her body to the side before it burned, the clatter of her back hitting the holy water basin, toppling the bowl and drenching her in a kind of unintentional baptism.</p><p>She’d wrung her jacket out in the sink after they crawled their way back to the motel, her shirt still sticking to her skin, the pink of it seeping in patches through the waterlogged white. She sighed quietly, subconsciously, tired and straightening her back out like it hurt. </p><p>“Here,” Dean said, nudging her out of the way gently, taking her jacket from her hands and hanging it over the towel rack. He ran the shower hot as Sam washed the cathedral grime and blood out from under her fingernails. </p><p>“I wish they wouldn’t always go for me.”</p><p>“It’s all your delicate girly features.”</p><p>“Sexist assholes.”</p><p>“Products of their time.” </p><p>She laughed, sat on the seat of the toilet and kicked off her boots for Dean to pick up and toss into the hallway to be dealt with later.</p><p>“Arms up.” </p><p>She winced with the effort, her elbows bent above her head while he peeled the shirt from her torso like a second skin, the material warm from her body. Sam ducked her head to get the collar over her head and came out of it with hair stuck to the sides of her face and a pained expression. </p><p>Dean pulled her to stand, gingerly, put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around to inspect the damage.</p><p>The skin was red and blotchy at her lower back, her skin prickling with goosebumps. Dean pressed a feather-light touch to the discolouring and she stood straight, alert, not breathing. The tag of her bra contorted with the dip of her spine, translucent with age and stuck to her skin with sweat.</p><p>“Hurt anywhere else?” Dean asked. There was nothing to be done for that kind of injury. The skin wasn’t split and there was no procedure to help it heal besides a handful of paracetamol chased with whiskey. </p><p>“Ribs.” </p><p>“Turn.” </p><p>Dean crouched for better access, and she sucked in a breath when he prodded at her side, her stomach tensing, pulling skin taut over her ribcage. Dean traced fingertips in lines, pressing hard enough for the skin to turn white under his touch, fading as he moved on. </p><p>Sam hissed when he hit high, just under her bra band, the lace against her skin curled up from years of being thrown in the wash to tangle with his shirts. She grabbed at Dean’s shoulder at the sudden pain, unbalancing him and he’d flung a hand out to grab her hip to steady himself, wishing he’d just fallen on his ass instead. </p><p>“Sorry,” Dean said, rolling three fingers to find evidence. “It doesn’t feel broken.” </p><p>Sam sighed, her hand declawing from the meat of his shoulder, flattening out in an apology. She didn’t move it from him so Dean didn’t move his on her hip. He could feel the jut of her bone under his palm, all lean and muscular. Sam was made for sharp sudden bursts of power, springloaded.</p><p>Dean checked her right side in similar style, paying attention to what he could sense under his sister’s skin and not her fingers on his neck. Pressure point, he could feel the current of it down his spine like a bolt of electricity.</p><p>There was a split second where it made sense for him to lean forward and put his mouth to her sternum, and it passed far too late after he had gone through with the thought. Her hand in his hair and the white-noise of the shower lulled him into some emboldened state. She breathed, staggered under his lips as he kissed her better, short, gentle and innocent; honestly. There was no ulterior motive. He’d forgotten the reasons why he shouldn’t to her expanse of skin. He loved her, he loved her.</p><p>She said his name, soft and forgiving. Pulled him off his knees with a tug to his collar; a suggestion. Sam kissed him where he stood, his cold hands on her bare hips. </p><p>It was nothing like their first, besides the similar bathroom backdrop. Pristine, private spaces where the world can’t see. Rooms for dissociating and putting oneself back together. Nothing about it felt wrong. She bit at his lip hard enough to jolt him back into his physical self. Sam, his sister, under his hands, under his mouth. </p><p>She laughed when he growled, just another game of push and pull, it felt as easy as that. Sparring, Sam dodged out of the way of his lips as she leant back to slap at the shower knob, the water dribbling to a trickle. He put his mouth to her throat instead, holding her to him so she wouldn’t fall, and that felt like a victory enough. </p><p>Sam pushed him backwards, two hands on his chest, <em> out, out out</em>, and then at his hem to pull his shirt overhead. </p><p>He laid her out on the bedspread and kissed up her body, his name on her tongue like gospel. <em> Dean</em>, said faith-worthy and it all felt otherworldly, evangelical, this, the beginning of all life. Her dangerous stretch of thigh on either side of his torso, jeans tossed somewhere unimportant, her hair spread, coming loose around her face as she looked up at him like he’d written scripture; hung the moon. This was how it was always meant to be, he could feel it in the way they fit together. </p><p>His lips caught on the gold chain around her neck and he ran his fingers over it, the links coiled in the dip of her throat, a tiny glinting crucifix. It took him off guard. Had she always worn it? Tucked under shirts and away from scrutiny? Had she bought it back on the road? Slipped into her pocket and purchased with a bottle of Jack in a paper bag? Was it a gift from Jessica that she couldn’t bear parting with? </p><p>Dean hummed and kissed over it, said nothing because it was just another part of the three year divide they were still working on sewing together. He knew his sister, but was in the process of sifting through the nitty-gritty parts of her that grief and separation had sedimented above her roots. If she needed to believe in something else to get her through the day, who was he to judge her? A six-pack and prayer; the duality of the pair of them.</p><p>There was nothing fancy about her underwear. Plain black and bought in a five-pack from Walmart the same as his own. The fact that it was Sam made up the difference, and it didn’t matter much after he mouthed at her belly and slid them down her legs anyway. </p><p>She dug her heels into his thighs as he slid two fingers down, wet and hot and silken. The details were not of import. What <em> was </em>to know was that she had ground her head back into the mattress and urged him on with a fervor that Dean knew from her. She didn’t go sweet and dainty under him. She was stern with what she wanted, in typical Sam fashion. She had never been one to pull her punches.</p><p>She flipped them and undid her own bra, exposing the entirety of herself over his hips. Her head blotting out the overhead light in some kind of cheap halo; their roles reversed. Dean couldn’t look away, his sister at her most honest. The lone freckle above the rise of her breast, the tapering of her belly, her necklace sitting perfect in the centre of her chest. </p><p>“C’mon, thought you were meant to be good at this.” Sam smirked with the promise of mischief, undoing his pants with the same skilled fingers she’d use to pick locks, untie knots with her hands bound behind her back, spin guns, flip him off. He got to feel them first hand when they curled around him and it was his turn to make a mess of her name. </p><p>He wondered if he should be worried that it was this easy. Years of build up all crescendoing to a point. Sam, sitting over him, rocking her hips to accommodate, her hands spread wide over his chest to brace herself, low, low whimpers that Dean had never heard pulled from his sister before. The pinnacle point, paramount, this was it. There would be no tomorrow, she had spun his future on its head. Where could they go from here? Where would they go from here? This was all he had ever wanted. </p><p>She took the reins with all the self-assuredness of a little sister, and for once - Dean let her without complaint. He was in no state to argue. She came with his hand gripping her shuddering thigh, with his thumb helping her along and Dean flipped her then, before he lost his nerve. Sliding back into her without pause, wanted to feel what it was like to hold her down like this, while she would let him. </p><p>She ran her hands through his hair, whispered coaxes into his ear, his mouth on her chest, leaving big oval bruises to blossom. Dean put his hands on either side of her hips, his fingers digging into her sides. A groan wrenched from deep and he pulled out, jerked himself the rest of the way and striped her belly messily. </p><p>Sam kissed him, while he attempted to catch his breath around her lips. She dragged her fingers through the tackiness on her stomach, and he really should have grimaced, it should have been gross but there was something about seeing her marked that transfixed him. His sister, his sister. It was disastrous, and he was in trouble. He would be trapped replaying this scene for the rest of his life. </p><p>Sam groaned and stretched out, Dean rolling to the side, keeping an arm over her chest because he was distantly worried whatever spell that was keeping them in good spirits about the whole thing would wear off if they broke contact. “Maybe a bad idea for bruised ribs.” </p><p>“Who’d a thought.” </p><p>“Who’d a thought,” Sam repeats, her head tipped to the side to look at him for a moment before shifting to kiss him, sweet and closed mouthed like she was sealing some kind of deal; this is how it was to be.</p><p>---</p><p>Sam was a different person in the presence of their father. Like she wasn’t sure how to stand without starting a fight. She watched her tongue, her body language pulled in, arms crossed over her chest. Liable to burst out in huge violent gestures and even more disastrous words if she wasn’t holding herself in. </p><p>She had kept herself in check after they had watched Meg fall three stories, no time for interpersonal fights with three deep claw slashes blooming over cheek. They went their separate ways again before any meaningful reunion. </p><p>Sam wasn’t happy about it, smart enough to know why they had to work apart but not enough to bat away the subsequent mood.</p><p>Seeing their father again for Dean meant that his priorities shifted slightly. It was no longer just them, wrapped up in themselves. John was a tangible thing again, a presence at the back of Dean’s mind. A year of their father lost behind texted coordinates and staticy voice-mails; it was jarring to see him alive. He kissed his sister with hesitation and felt guilty, like he’d led her on, or promised her something he couldn’t deliver. </p><p>They were running low on cash in Louisiana, witches with bones for jewellery and moss rotted churches; long long stretches of bayou. They picked a bar based on the number of trucks pulled up alongside and got to work. </p><p>Sam had been tentative, not in the right headspace to hustle, pretty peeved at him for snapping back to a time before he knew what she looked spread out underneath him. So Dean had told her to wait in the car, then,<em> I’ll continue to be the fucking breadwinner.  </em></p><p>She’d saunted in a half an hour later, bored with whatever she’d been reading, and the beer-gutted, backwards-capped trucker turned his attention from the crumpled bills resting on the side of the pool table and onto Dean’s sister. Flicked glances over pints, eyes from all corners of the room. Dean ground his teeth. </p><p>Sam sat at the bar with no nod in his direction, no tip off that they were related, two strangers on opposite sides of the room. She ordered two shots and chased them both down with half a beer. The guy he was hustling whistled low, dirty, raised his eyebrows in the universal <em> get a load of that </em>gesture. Dean thought about cracking his nose with the heavy end of the cue. Focused his malicious intent on pocketing three balls in a row instead. </p><p>They played a very distracted game, missed shots on both sides, Dean’s less purposefully than he’d like to admit. His eyes were on Sam, standing with her hips cocked, picking a song from the jukebox before making her way over with shirt open two buttons further down than it had been in the car. </p><p>The truck driver said something slimy and Sam leaned her thigh against the table, spotlit with the green-tinged pool downlight. She watched them play while the jukebox told them she had <em>such pretty eyes for a snake. </em></p><p>Dean knew what he would have been doing if it wasn’t Sam. If any other young, attractive brunette with legs up to here was sidling up to him at a bar with the same desperate intent his sister was going for. Game face on, collar popped, lines recited and Dean was struck with the thought that maybe that was Sam’s play here. If Sam couldn’t get what she wanted, related, then -</p><p>Dean had put a hand to the small of her back and when the bartender popped out for a smoke break and saw two drunk patrons going to third base against the brick wall, his only thought would have been, <em>oh to be young.  </em></p><p>---</p><p>Sam was driving fast. Faster than he would have on a stretch of road like this, agitated and trailing John in his muscle truck. Dean white-knuckled the door and Sam floored it quick enough for Dean’s heart to be left behind in the rearview, bouncing along gruesomely on the tarmac.</p><p>Sam, with her teeth bared, had never cowered away from their father, and Dean put himself between them in case throats were torn, a hand on his father’s chest with Sam breathing hard around rage behind him. </p><p>John bore down at him with a burning look that said <em> keep her in check </em>and Dean pulled them back to the car before he could give away the fact that he hadn’t been able to keep a leash on Sam since he got her back. </p><p>Longer. She wouldn’t have left, if he had that kind of sway. She was a bull loose in a pen with their father around, short-fused and liable to cause catastrophe at the smallest provocation. Her anger was a wild animal, dangerous and unpredictable. Kissing her had done little to absolve her of that, and their father looked at her like she was sick with it. Dean wondered if it tied into her premonitions, lest they forget about those. </p><p>In the years of wanting them to be a family - daydreams of diner dinners with Sam’s leg pressed up against his in the booth, their father on the other side, eating their leftover cold fries - Dean had forgotten that Sam and John had never really gotten along. Of course they wouldn’t now, Sam still had their father’s last words on replay. <em> If you leave, you don’t come back</em>. Dean had wanted to strangle him for making Dean pick sides, still kind of did now, his broad back turned as Sam made herself small in the passenger seat.</p><p>Dean didn’t touch her again. Dean bled out on the splintered floor and Sam had her hands on the Colt, pointed at their father, the yellow-eyed demon, the instigators behind her bone-deep hurt, the uncontrollable fire in her gut, the reason behind every fucked up thing that had ever happened to them. Two birds with one stone. </p><p>But she hadn’t pulled the trigger, and Dean thought, <em> that’s my sister. </em>Exposed down to the barest roots. He loved her, through the in and out of foggy unconsciousness. In the backseat of the car with an arm slung across his gashed chest, Sam, with her hands wet with blood slipping on the wheel, shooting him obvious, sporadic looks in the rearview. </p><p>Cars are designed to crumple, but the Impala was never really just a car, was it? Sam had been concentrating on Dean but this was not a wreck swervable. The truck hit the passenger side and there was carnage all over the road; oil and mechanical entrails. Dean - in that flash moment where the world slowed in the seconds before death - only saw Sam in the rearview mirror. Her, <em> no sir, not before everything </em>resounded clear around the brilliant shatter of glass. </p><p>Dean thought, <em> we should have had more time.  </em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJK3OEUdYJs&amp;ab_channel=Empire%21Empire%21%28IWasaLonelyEstate%29-Topic">Archival Footage</a> - Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate)<br/><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMP4W-ZPuqU&amp;ab_channel=MagnoliaElectricCo.-Topic">Such Pretty Eyes For a Snake</a> - Magnolia Electric Co.</p><p>You can find me on <a href="https://twitter.com/cowboywincest">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://cowboywincest.tumblr.com/">Tumblr!</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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